Posted on 01/19/2009 9:42:35 PM PST by Coyoteman
Hoo boy!
It’s not a conservative positon to side with the godless NEA liberal agenda, it’s just not.
It’s not the conservative position to demand all others be silenced when their cult of evolution is criticized and sues dissenters into silence, science as only enforced by courts, not scientific debate; it’s just not.
And it’s certainly not the Christian position to demand of children to accept ideeas such as “there’s no place for God in science class”, indeed in schools in general, it’s just not.
Metmom has posted many links many times explaining the conservative position and that this ideology is the more successful scientific model as home-schoolers and private schoolers fare better than the NEA socialized kids.
This is not even close to being debatable either.
Yes, you really are. These things are true: (1) creationism/ID is a religious belief that relies upon supernatural explanation, not observable phenomena to explain the natural world. It is not a scientific theory; (2) there is a finite amount of time available to public school teachers to educate children about science; (3) if a religious belief like creationism/ID is taught "alongside" scientific theories in public school classrooms, it is necessarily replacing time that would otherwise have been spent on actual science.
For all the controversy, the best solution would be to eliminate the teaching of evolution in public schools.
Again, we are back to the creationsist/IDer's desire to eliminate a scientific theory from public education simply because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. That is not how public education works.
There’s plenty of biology that can be studied without ever getting anywhere near the topic. The vast majority of students that are required to take Bio will not be using it in the career field of their choice. Even if they go into science, evolution is only a concern in some biological fields.
This shows a shocking lack of understanding about the role of the theory of evolution in modern biology. I do not doubt that many public schools do not adequately teach the theory (many out of a fear of reprisal from creationists/IDers), but to suggest that one of the keystones of modern biology should be hidden from students is a ridiculous notion that only serves to bury kids' heads in the sand to keep them away from ideas you consider dangerous.
The whole crux of this issue is control over the public school system between the parents who want one thing, and the liberals and self-appointed elite who think that they know better what is good for everyone else, whether they like it or not and try to force it on the unwilling unwashed masses.
Nonsense.
The crux of the matter is fundamentalists want to censor or remove the theory of evolution from science classes because they think it is inconsistent with their particular religious beliefs.
They want to force their narrow religious interpretations on all students in the guise of, or instead of, science -- contrary to the constitution and case law.
Not true- it still can't be reduced, nor has htere ever been shown any examples of the assumptions being made-
[[whatever]]
Yes indeed- that's the usual response- apparnetly htis constitutes objective scientific discussion
Talkorigins claim: Blood clotting is not irreducibly complex. Some animals -- dolphins, for example -- get along fine without the Hagemann factor, a component of the human blood clotting system which Behe includes in its "irreducible" complexity. Doolittle and Feng (1987) predicted that "lower" vertebrates would lack the "contact pathway" of blood clotting. Work on the genomes of the puffer fish and zebrafish have confirmed this
The facts: This would seem to simply show that dolphins and other animals which lack the Hagemann factor have a blood clotting chemistry that is different from humans. That’s not a surprise from a creation perspective, particularly given the fact that dolphins live in water while humans live on land.
The most this shows is that Behe erred on this one point.
The fact that some animals do not need the Hagemann factor for blood clotting says nothing about humans. If humans can get along without it, then Talk Origins would have a point, but otherwise the Hagemann factor could still be part of the irreducible complexity of human blood.
Behe's Rebuttal to Miller's silly slight of hand:
Q. -- and Doolittle and Davidson, et al, to argue against the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting system. Do you agree with his assessment of those studies?
A. No, I do not.
Q. And you have some diagrams to explain this further, sir?
A. Yes, I do. This is a slide from Professor Miller's presentation showing work from Jiang and Doolittle. And he also shows a diagram of the blood clotting cascade. And notice again, it's a branched pathway with the intrinsic pathway and the extrinsic pathway. And Professor Miller makes the point that in DNA sequencing studies of something called a puffer fish, where the entire DNA of its genome was sequenced, and scientists looked for genes that might code for the first couple components of the intrinsic pathway, they were not found.
And so Professor Miller demonstrated that by -- if you could push to start the animation -- Professor Miller demonstrated that by having those three components blanked out in white. Nonetheless, puffer fish have a functioning clotting system. And so Professor Miller argued that this is evidence against irreducible complexity.
But I disagree. And the reason I disagree is that I made some careful distinctions in Darwin's Black Box. I was very careful to specify exactly what I was talking about, and Professor Miller was not as careful in interpreting it. In Darwin's Black Box, in the chapter on blood clotting cascade, I write that, a different difference is that the control pathway for blood clotting splits in two. Potentially then, there are two possible ways to trigger clotting.
The relative importance of the two pathways in living organisms is still rather murky. Many experiments on blood clotting are hard to do. And I go on to explain why they must be murky. And then I continue on the next slide. Because of that uncertainty, I said, let's, leaving aside the system before the fork in the pathway, where some details are less well-known, the blood clotting system fits the definition of irreducible complexity. And I noted that the components of the system beyond the fork in the pathway are fibrinogen, prothrombin, Stuart factor, and proaccelerin. So I was focusing on a particular part of the pathway, as I tried to make clear in Darwin's Black Box. If we could go to the next slide. Those components that I was focusing on are down here at the lower parts of the pathway. And I also circled here, for illustration, the extrinsic pathway. It turns out that the pathway can be activated by either one of two directions. And so I concentrated on the parts that were close to the common point after the fork.
So if you could, I think, advance one slide. If you concentrate on those components, a number of those components are ones which have been experimentally knocked out such as fibrinogen, prothrombin, and tissue factor. And if we go to the next slide, I have red arrows pointing to those components. And you see that they all fall in the area of the blood clotting cascade that I was specifically restricting my arguments to. And if you knock out those components, in fact, the blood clotting cascade is broken. So my discussion of irreducible complexity was, I tried to be precise, and my argument, my argument is experimentally supported.
Q. Now just by way of analogy to maybe help explain further. Would this be similar to, for example, a light having two switches, and the blood clotting system that you focus on would be the light, and these extrinsic and intrinsic pathways would be two separate switches to turn on the system?
A. That's right. You might have two switches. If one switch was broke, you could still use the other one. So, yes, that's a good analogy.
Q. So Dr. Miller is focusing on the light switch, and you were focusing on the light?
A. Pretty much, yes.
Q. I believe we have another slide that Dr. Miller used, I guess, to support his claim, which you have some difficulties with, is that correct?
A. Yes, that's right. Professor Miller showed these two figures from Davidson, et al, and from Jiang, et al, Jiang and Doolittle, and said that the suggestions can be tested by detailed analysis of the clotting pathway components. But what I want to point out is that whenever you see branching diagrams like this, especially that have little names that you can't recognize on them, one is talking about sequence comparisons, protein sequence comparisons, or DNA nucleotide sequence comparisons. As I indicated in my testimony yesterday, such sequence comparisons simply don't speak to the question of whether random mutation and natural selection can build a system. For example, as I said yesterday, the sequences of the proteins in the type III secretory system and the bacterial flagellum are all well-known, but people still can't figure out how such a thing could have been put together. The sequences of many components of the blood clotting cascade have been available for a while and were available to Russell Doolittle when he wrote his essay in the Boston Review. And they were still unhelpful in trying to figure out how Darwinian pathways could put together a complex system. And as we cited yesterday, in Professor Padian's expert statement, he indicates that molecular sequence data simply can't tell what an ancestral state was. He thinks fossil evidence is required. So my general point is that, while such data is interesting, and while such data to a non-expert in the field might look like it may explain something, if it's asserted to explain something, nonetheless, such data is irrelevant to the question of whether the Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection can explain complex systems.
Q. So is it your opinion then, the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex?
A. Yes, it is.
crap forgot link again: http://creationwiki.org/(Talk.Origins)_Blood_clotting_is_irreducibly_complex
Whiel it might be your opinion that unsupported assumptions somehow ‘refute’ behe= let’s not pretend that they are scientific claims- they are not, they are assumptions, and they are assumptions that don’t address the actual IC of hte systems in quesiton-
This strawman has been addressed many times:
As a chemist, the most fascinating issue for me revolves around the origin of life. Before life began, there was no biology, only chemistry – and chemistry is the same for all time. What works (or not) today, worked (or not) back in the beginning. So, our ideas about what happened on Earth prior to the emergence of life are eminently testable in the lab. And what we have seen thus far when the reactions are left unguided as they would be in the natural world is not much. Indeed, the decomposition reactions and competing reactions out distance the synthetic reactions by far. It is only when an intelligent agent (such as a scientist or graduate student) intervenes and “tweaks” the reactions conditions “just right” do we see any progress at all, and even then it is still quite limited and very far from where we need to get. Thus, it is the very chemistry that speaks of a need for something more than just time and chance. And whether that be simply a highly specified set of initial conditions (fine-tuning) or some form of continual guidance until life ultimately emerges is still unknown. But what we do know is the random chemical reactions are both woefully insufficient and are often working against the pathways needed to succeed. For these reasons I have serious doubts about whether the current Darwinian paradigm will ever make additional progress in this area.
Edward Peltzer
Ph.D. Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institute)
Associate Editor, Marine Chemistry
It deserves to be heard.
If they replace science with theology then why bother?
It would have been difficult for you to post a more irrelevant cut & paste as a response to my direct question.
Your oft-posted chemist’s musings on the origins of life on earth have nothing to do with the issue of why creationism/ID should be taught in public schools as “science” while astrology should not. Can you answer this question or not?
>> What, in your opinion, are the “IC” parts of the blood clotting cascade?
> Behe described them in his rebuttal to Miller’s deceitful slight-of-hand
> deconstruction of hte reducible aspects of hte IC systems- you’ll
> find his rebuttal on his site ‘arn.org’ I beleive it is
Was it this paper?
http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_indefenseofbloodclottingcascade.htm
Because, if so, he doesn’t really address which parts of the original cascade are “irreducible”.
I think Casey Luskin, as js pointed out, did explicitly list them. A copy of his diagram is here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/files/2009/01/luskin-fig-5.jpg
The “irreducible” parts are, supposedly, the ones in the red box on the left.
Problem is that Russel Doolittle from UCSD just published last year a study of the lamprey genome, and factor V (in the red box) does not exist.
See further discussion here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/02/smoke-and-mirrors-whales-and-lampreys-a-guest-post-by-ken-miller/
"Intelligent Design theory is a branch of information science. It is based on the same mathematical principles that underly criminology (specifically in the area of solving crime), detection of insurance fraud, artificial intelligence, and other areas of scientific endeavor involving detecting the acts of "intelligent agents" in contrast with random events and "system noise".
ID theory as it applies to biology asks a number of fundamental and challenging questions that go right to the heart of some of the presuppositions underlying orthodox Darwinism.That is why ID theory has orthodox Darwinists responding like a hostile priesthood protecting their orthodoxy, rather than engaging in frank and open discussion."
A three pronged thrust:
Label: By calling it creationism, it gets lumped in with the creationist movement - genesis as literal history, 6-day creation 6000 year old earth, recent creationism movement.
Misinformation: They accuse the ID movement of not being real science because they claim it does not publish in peer reviewed journals. In spite of their best efforts to stonewall in this regard, ID theory is now widely in the peer-review regime. http://www.iscid.org is a good link in this regard.
Dodge: If all else fails, simply avoid responding to the difficult and scientifically challenging issues that intelligent design theory (as applied to orthodox Darwinism) is raising.
These dishonest and unethical tactics should have no place in our open and frank scientific era of 2002.
The problem is that the word Creationism has a nasty stigma. Label Intelligent Design theory creationism, and its opponents effectively dodge the need to address it. [LINK]
Yet you seem to think that what you believe ought to be taught in public schools at public expense should just simply naturally occur and never be subject to the turbulence of public policy debate and discussion.
I forgot to address this nonsense about starving to death and not being able to put food on the table...pre-NEA science flourished, and no one starved. And we didn’t have a theocracy, no one was burned at the stake, there was no inquistion, and the dark ages didn’t replace enlightenment...(whatever that is post NEA I for one will NEVER understand!)
[[Problem is that Russel Doolittle from UCSD just published last year a study of the lamprey genome, and factor V (in the red box) does not exist.]]
Not sure what your point is? Factor V is missing in lampreys? Big deal? Again, how does this relate to humans or species that rely on Factor V? Have they shown lampreys had it in the past, but lost it without ill effect?
Gotta leave for awhile, but like hte link to creationwiki I posted said- pointing to an animal that is completely different than us, and statign that because they have different mechanisms for blood clotting in no way undermines the fact that blood clotting in other species NEEDS the IC parts inplace or else they’ll perish. Animals, espeically species which live in water envirnments, could and most likely very well do have a compeltely different blood clottign mechanism by DESING.
But the teaching of evolution in public schools is teaching religious beliefs. Evolution is the creation account of the secular humanist and atheist. It does not belong in the public schools either. Calling it science to make it sound more legitimate and make it more palatable for the general public does nothing to disguise the fact that it is pushing a worldview on the children, one diametrically opposed to what most people in this world believe.
Science has not actually disproved the creation account in Scripture. It's merely offering its own naturalistic, no God allowed version on how life arose on this planet, and that falls into the realm of philosophy.
Science has not yet begun to provide enough support to origins to even give it serious consideration, and the evidence for the ToE is circumstantial and forensic, not the scientific method.
There is no legitimate way to equate creation and astrology without it being an attack on Christianity.
Sorry. Your earlier quote from Behe (after he had a chance to think about how wrong he was the first time) was:
“...Because of that uncertainty, I said, let’s, leaving aside the system before the fork in the pathway, where some details are less well-known, the blood clotting system fits the definition of irreducible complexity. And I noted that the components of the system beyond the fork in the pathway are fibrinogen, prothrombin, Stuart factor, and proaccelerin. So I was focusing on a particular part of the pathway, as I tried to make clear in Darwin’s Black Box. If we could go to the next slide. Those components that I was focusing on are down here at the lower parts of the pathway. And I also circled here, for illustration, the extrinsic pathway. It turns out that the pathway can be activated by either one of two directions. And so I concentrated on the parts that were close to the common point after the fork.
So if you could, I think, advance one slide. If you concentrate on those components, a number of those components are ones which have been experimentally knocked out such as fibrinogen, prothrombin, and tissue factor. And if we go to the next slide, I have red arrows pointing to those components. And you see that they all fall in the area of the blood clotting cascade that I was specifically restricting my arguments to. And if you knock out those components, in fact, the blood clotting cascade is broken. So my discussion of irreducible complexity was, I tried to be precise, and my argument, my argument is experimentally supported...”
Factor V is proaccelerin. It doesn’t exist in the lamprey. Therefore, the system, as described by Behe, is not “irreducibly complex”.
QED
Sir,
I am not about to argue with symantics of macro vs. micro evolution, nor am I equipped to discuss every exception to every rule. I will say that your eagerness to stratify objectivists into distinct categories (pro/con macro-evolution) I find to be of questionable intent and utility, but such are merely the egotistical judgements of one Man, and as such, not of any more particular utility;)
As a professional engineer who utilizes objective science (specifically, principles of abstract math and computation, combined with theories about the reproductive effectiveness of particular algorithms (organisms) within particular computational environments), My interest in science and objectivity is entirely and completely functional in nature. I could not care less about the ontological Truth of any given theory, only it’s ability to help me predict, and hence engineer the given domain in which I work.
That said, the biggest problem I have Ever had with ID is simply this- I have yet to find a single situation where an ID theory provides any additional functional predictive benefit above and beyond it’s evolutionary antithesis. To try and clarify- So yes, There are plenty of Scientifically rigorous Intellectual Theories which falsify parts (or all, I don’t claim to know) of macro-evolution by proving the predictions of macro-evolution wrong in specific cases, but is there a single I.D. Theory which, in addition to falsifying some aspect of macro-evolution, also provides verifiable, testable and practical rules of thumb which enable scientists and practical professionals such as my self to better predict, model and affect their world? Could you give me an example of a practical engineering breakthrough brought about by I.D. Theory that would not have been possible with merely macro-evolutionary theoretical modeling?
If there is, then I will admit that perhaps I’ve mis-judged ID.
I'm afraid this assertion is mistaken, as in fact simple patterns in computational security do in fact correlate quite clearly and explicitly with biological models of pathology (virii), and this is currently a field of an incredible amount of research. (Google it, it's interesting stuff;))
Granted, we're only at the level of modeling the simpler biological realities at this point, but that's irrelevant to my point that the correlation does exist, and it is functionally predictive. In fact, my specific field is the development of "antibody" tags in computer systems, that is, a system for detecting and recognizing the telltale markers of pathogenic behavior in computational system utilizing a mechanism directly lifted from biological study of the human immunology. (Please forgive me for not being more specific, details beyond this abstract are highly protected trade secrets).
The point, however, is that I can assure you that indeed, these simple patterns can and do "evolve" into systems which mirror complex biological realities, to the point that the functional predictive potential of biological immunology theory can be made to directly translate to a form of "Computational Immunology Theory." No, of course, this correlation in no way implies causation, I.E. simply because computers model biology in no way implies that biology is based in the same basic, simple logic of computers: but to say no correlation can exist is simply and flatly incorrect.
Who created the metainfo? Is nature capable of doing so? I'm not sure. I can assure you that human beings did not "intentionally" create an immunological nature to software behavior theory, that is something that we have found through observation, not intentional engineering. Who created it. did Nature? Did God? Did We? I don't know, don't claim to, don't even want to. That's cosmology, and beyond the scope of my professional expertise. All I can tell you is that it is there.
Thanks for the prompt response! I'm enjoying this immensely.
When you perceive each and every criticism or challenge to evolution as a religious attack, it stops being theory and becomes a religious cult.
There is plenty of biology at the high school level that can be studied without knowing the current speculations on how one form came from another. High school students spend all of a couple days on evolution, maybe a week at the most. It’s simply not that critical to the study of biology in general. Having a solid knowledge of biology is useful for studying evolution, but evolution is not critical for biology.
Lots of biology was studied before Darwin wrote the Origin of the Species that was not invalidated by his theory. Cell biology, physiology, ecology, can all be studied without knowing HOW the creatures allegedly evolved from each other.
The ToE is not the only theory that can be studied in Biology, or any other science. Not studying the ToE is not going to handicap science majors for life. They can go on and study other theories that are better suited to the scientific method that the ToE.
They can learn what they need to at the college level from far more qualified teachers than your average teaching major.
No doubt some people want evolution removed from the public schools because it conflicts with their religious beliefs, but OTOH, that’s exactly why the atheists want creation removed from the schools, because it conflicts with their belief system.
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